Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.
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In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.
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Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!
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Where there is no love, a person's faithfulness to the marriage bond is probably against nature.
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I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.
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If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.
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Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
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Style is the physiognomy of the mind. It is more infallible than that of the body. To imitate the style of another is said to be wearing a mask. However beautiful it may be, it is through its lifelessness insipid and intolerable, so that even the most ugly living face is more engaging.
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There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.
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Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
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...nothing at all rides on the life or death of the individual.
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Truth is most beautiful undraped.
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Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.
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Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.
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There is one respect in which beasts show real wisdom... their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.
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Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.
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There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
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Meistens belehrt uns erst der Verlust über den Wert der Dinge.
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Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
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As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.
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What a man can do and suffer is unknown to himself till some occasion presents itself which draws out the hidden power. Just as one sees not in the water of an unruffled pond the fury and roar with which it can dash down a steep rock without injury to itself, or how high it is capable of rising; or as little as one can suspect the latent heat in ice-cold water.
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The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.
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In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear.
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Thus also every keen pleasure is an error and an illusion, for no attained wish can give lasting satisfaction.